Trivia

For hidden aspects, see Easter Eggs.

Thief 1: The Dark Project[]

Thief fans requested the level editor, so Looking Glass Studios released DromEd (subsequently included on the Thief Gold and Thief II: The Metal Age disks), there are now hundreds of Fan missions available for download.

Members of the design team have said that books by Umberto Eco ("The Name of the Rose" among others) were a big inspiration for the atmosphere and setting of the game.

According to an interview made by the now defunct PC Accelerator to project designer Steve Pearsall the word "Taffer", which many fans went to great lengths to define as some sort of long-lost "olden" word, was actually created by level designer Laura Baldwin. It was originally meant to be some sort of slang for common criminal but it evolved from that point on. ^[1]

Like other Looking Glass games like System Shock 1 and 2, this game also contains a hidden basketball court.

Edit Thief Gold's config file (dark.cfg located in Thief's root dir) and insert a line "play starting_mission 16" at its beginning. Now run the game, start a new one and skip the training mission. You will see a very silly video with "temporary drawings" and then you'll play a great mission containing a lot of "special effects", things that didn't make it to the final release of the game, and a lot of bloopers and generally funny things (how do you like the Burricks that literally fart themselves to death?). Make sure to read the golden plates with information and explanations left by the programmers.

In the chapter "Strange Bedfellows", you can find a book in the library which says:

"Hadst I a hammer, wouldst I hammer in the morning. Wouldst I hammer in the evening, all over this land." This is a reference to the quite famous song "If I Had a Hammer". The song begins like this: If I had a hammer / I'd hammer in the morning / I'd hammer in the evening / All over this land

Thief II: The Metal Age[]

In the "Precious Cargo" level, you can find a book lying on the floor in one of the pirate cabins. In it is a list of rules and articles for those on a pirate ship to obey. With the exception of a few name changes, the text is a direct quote of the articles drawn up by pirate Captain John Phillips and the crew of The Revenge in 1723.

This game was the last game made by Looking Glass Studios, the makers of series such as Thief and System Shock. Despite the fact that the games the company made were cult favorites, financial problems rocked the company, and the company shut down in 2000. The rights to the third Thief game were picked up by Ion Storm (the makers of Deus Ex).

On many of the menus used in Thief 2, you can see moving gears and machinery through the glass which may look familiar. In fact the Thief 2 menus are identical to those of the original Thief: The Dark Project, only a faceplate ("fancy covering") has been added over the graphics of the machinery. As a result the sound of the machinery is also muted. I suppose this represents progress.

In May 2005, five years after the original release, fans of the game presented their unofficial expansion: T2X: Shadows of the Metal Age, with 13 new levels, 10 new weapons, new characters and over 3,000 spoken lines. You play as a female thief, Zaya. The expansion can be downloaded here.

Thief II was developed with an enhanced version of the Dark Engine.

Bram Gervaisius' ill-fated librarian in missions 13 & 14 is named Giles. It's probably not a coincidence that in the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy's watcher Giles was the school librarian.

In the Ambush! level, go to the Southern portion of Helena Way. Use the map to get there. Look for a wall bordering the stream that has three torches stuck in it. There are four boards nailed to the wall in the shape of a W. In the stream directly below the W, is a bag of gold. This is a reference to the old movie "It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world" In the movie, a bunch of people are trying to find buried treasure that was ultimately located buried "Under the big W" (in the movie it was four palm trees that grew to make the W)

In Framed, that murderer Schmidt, held in solitary confinement, was originally named Crazy Gordon Smith. "Smiler Grogan" became "Smith, Gordan." The madness in the movie title may be connected to the fact that Smith was crazy. The sound schema for Schmidt calls him Crazy Gordon Smith, and the filenames for his rants still recall the original Smith.
Two of the many unused comments by Garrett that refer to him, once by the old name:

gar0503: "Judging from the guard post, I'll bet that's Smith's place."

gar0504: "Hmm. Whipple and Helena Way... That's where that prisoner in Shoalsgate said he stashed some loot."

Thief: Deadly Shadows[]

Ion Storm decided not to name the game "Thief III" for fear that it would alienate console gamers who had never played the previous two titles.

Both the Xbox and PC versions shipped with a bug that affected the AI. The difficulty setting of the AI would default to Normal from all other levels (Easy, Hard, Expert) upon reloading a save game or re-entering a load zone. The game would still indicate that the setting was unchanged, so the only noticeable effect was that the awareness of the guards was easier and they dealt less damage. Ion Storm released a small patch (415 kb) for the PC version that fixes this problem.

IonStorm developed Thief III with a heavily modified Unreal engine. Its the same engine that was used for Deus Ex: The invisible War.

The various painted portraits gracing walls throughout the game actually depict members of the development team. They were drawn by comic-book artist Frank Teran, who supplied much of the concept art for the game.

This game is commonly referred as Thief III because its the 3rd in the series--the conclusive chapter of the trilogy--that Warren Spector had produced whilst working at Looking Glass Studios. Eidos essentially closed Looking Glass while Thief II was a new release. As fate and John Romero would have it, Spector and crew were brought on board to Ion Storm-Austin. (Note: Ion Storm-Austin was also an Eidos funded studio.)

Much like how Looking Glass closed after finishing Thief II, Ion Storm closed after completing Thief Deadly Shadows.

References[]

↑ Taffer's Thief Walkthrough

Navigation
Games	Original	Thief: The Dark Project · Thief Gold · Thief II: The Metal Age · Thief: Deadly Shadows
	Demo	Thief: The Dark Project · Thief Gold · Thief II: The Metal Age · Thief: Deadly Shadows
	Reboot	Thief (reboot)
	Mobile	Thief: Deadly Shadows Mobile
Game Design	Game Play	Lighting · Sound · Abilities · Weapons · Loot · Knockout · Backstab · Approach
	Technology	Dark Engine · DromEd · T3Ed
	Other	Storyline · Timeline · Cut scenes · Architecture · Easter Eggs · Trivia
Development	Studios	Looking Glass Studios · Ion Storm
Development	Other	Designer Credits · LGS TDP Diary · Emil's Journal · The Making of Thief II